Interesting books, and news items about books and periodicals, particularly with respect to political and social issues. Since May, 2016, many of my larger book reviews have been put on a hosted Wordpress site; so now this blog emphasizes previews, interviews with authors, booklets, large periodical articles, and literary business issues. Note: no one pays me for these reviews; they are not "endorsements"!

The author, who looks and says he is in his late twenties,
as I recall, and I believe lives somewhere in Florida, runs the “Economic
Invincibility” YouTube channel.

Today (Saturday morning) was the first time that I saw
mention of the publication of the e-book on his channel.I downloaded ($7.99) it and read it in about
two hours. Better use of my time and
money than Netflix.

The matching video today was called “The Cure for Modernity”
pretty well explains his moral philosophy.You could say it is a kind of libertarianism with a heavy emphasis on
personal responsibility, but with awareness
on the possibility of suddenly needing interdependence with others. Charles Murray might be a fair comparison. He says he is independent and denies any party
and criticizes blind tribalism and political partisanship. You get the
impression that if he were president he would get things done and put “Trump”
to shame (even though he supported Trump, with no orange balloons).OK, Peter Thiel is old enough to be president
– oops, born in Germany. So maybe Thiel should fix the madness in the EU (like
Article 13?) Nevertheless, I like the idea that “the young people will win”.That could be Martin, David Hogg, and now
Nick Sandmann, young people of various political persuasions who give you the
feeling that they can make things happen. OK, any of a number of young people I
can think of would have become “The Apprentice” (including Martin) and would
make a real difference.

The book is aimed for young adults, with particular advice
toward school (college, grad school, b-school, Ph D, trades) and work and
staying out of debt.He talks a lot about
credit cards, savings, 401(k), rents, mortgages, and how credit scores work
(without getting into China’s experiment by extending to “social credit scores”).
He also talks about job interviewing and
dealing the politics in the workplace, especially the risks of accidental
involvement in supposed sexual harassment.

He believes people should be strict with their own
self-assessment.Don’t go to college
just because you do well on tests.Can
you do manual labor?Can you change your
own oil?Can you camp out.(OK, science fair winner Jack Andraka – “Breakthrough”
[March 18, 2015], was an avid camper in high school and kayaker today – and finishing
at Stanford – I think EI would approve.) There is some recommendation of an almost
Maoist humility. My phrase for that was always "pay your bills and pay your dues."

He also advocates minimalism and even talks about living out of a van as a possibly effective lifestyle. He likes rural communities.

What’s interesting is his views on free speech and social
media, and how this relates back to self-assessment and how one regards others. In the past, he has been critical of people's naïve belief in their "rights" on platforms run by private entities, and has said that at some point if you want to he heard with sustainability, you need to play ball with the political system that is there and run for office or support candidates, even if you think some of it is corrupt; only "you" can make it better.

Toward the end, he does insist that critical thinking is
important, and the capacity to speak for the self (without going through
activist organizations) matters.Yet he
discourages most people from using social media very much, particularly if they
get addicted to popularity or followers.For many people, social media will be a valueless trap where one slip-up
or wrong impression will mark one for life – and it is so easy for misleading content
(from trolls) to go viral. He mentions his concerns about video channels as a source
of income, given the recent scandals (Patreon, which he doesn’t name
specifically, payment processor and advertiser queasiness).Many people will be in positions where they
have to be very careful about their personal privacy and the possibility of
targeting (or even framing) by hostile others. But he thinks that books, or
more permanent items (like real films or peer-reviewed articles) are a better
way to engage media.

Martin never mentions the idea of suspect class or oppressed
group. His views of personal resilience follow those of Haidt, for example (“The
Coddling of the American Mind”), or Taleb (anti-fragility). Sometimes he seems
to denigrate people whom he sees as weak, gullible, or incompetent, but other
times he talks about the need to help others and cooperate. He advocates localism and personal fitness, ranging from cooking one's own food from ingredients, to vigorous fitness physical fitness (large numbers of situps, pushups and even pullups, at least for men). He warns that technological dependence makes us vulnerable and that the Internet or modernity could be taken away by a determined enemy or even natural event with no notice (no direct mention of EMP of extreme solar storms, but that may be what he refers to).

There's just one homonym error in the text, "right" as a verb when "write" is what was intended. But his vocabulary, finding rich metaphors in some little used old English nouns and verbs (like "dollop") is striking. That keeps the writing terse with fewer adjectives and those dreaded adverbs.

He makes a useful reference to Lin Yutang's "The Importance of Living" a real life, because you never know when artifices can be taken away by "Black Swans" (Taleb's concept). Despite his rather Ayn Rand-like outlook, he does remind us that anything can happen to anyone (car accident, criminal violence, or cancer).

Martin has said he is working on two novels, a fantasy, and a sci-fi scenario (I wonder if it's about who gets to evacuate Earth and start over.)

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Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

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